Fatally knocked down by a speeding vehicle along the approach road to the school, I found this bird lying right in the middle of the road on my morning walk last week.
This road has relatively less traffic compared to the highway that it branches off from. Most of the vehicles that use this road are those of the school, its staff, its parents or visitors. A few vehicles from the villages too ply on the road, mostly two- and three-wheelers, occasional tractors or vans. A stretch of the road is on the route of the transport bus and college buses from Madanapalle.
I have been regularly seeing several roadkills on this road, just 2.5 km in length. The victims include mammals like gerbils and squirrels, snakes, lizards, frogs and toads, snails, millipedes, insects and occasional birds.
If this is the scale of casualty amongst the wildlife, I dread to even think of the amount of deaths/injury on roads across the length and breadth of this country where even large mammals are knocked down by passing vehicles. With several of the roads passing through protected areas with the authorities not sensitive to the wildlife, the situation is going to very grim indeed.
- Santharam
22nd Dec 2021